Addictions
B.C.’s provincial health officer should be fired
Dr. Bonnie Henry has been British Columbia’s provincial health officer since 2014. She has used her position to advocate for expanded legal access to addictive drugs.
By Rahim Mohamed
If Premier Eby has little faith in Dr. Bonnie Henry’s radical drug legalization agenda, why keep her on the job?
B.C.’s Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has been one of Canada’s leading advocates for radical “harm reduction” policies — but Premier David Eby cast an unmistakable vote of non-confidence in her judgment last month when he called her position on safer supply a “non-starter.”
Eby’s remarks came just days after Dr. Henry told a parliamentary committee in Ottawa that she supported the “legalization and regulation” of illicit street drugs. The public disagreement suggested a sidelining of the doctor within the provincial government — especially after Eby further distanced himself from her by announcing that he’d appointed a separate medical expert, Dr. Daniel Vigo, to advise him on the province’s toxic drug crisis.
It is great to see that Eby is starting to treat Dr. Henry’s activist-driven recommendations with the scepticism they deserve. But he needs to go farther. The doctor should be fired.
Yet Eby has thus far rebuffed calls to remove Dr. Henry from her post. To the contrary, Eby insists that he has “huge confidence” in her ability to continue on as B.C.’s top public health official, despite his disagreements with her on how to combat the overdose crisis.
To reiterate, the premier’s current position is that he trusts his provincial health officer to effectively do her job, despite being fundamentally and irreconcilably at odds with her over the province’s most pressing public health issue — which, might we remember, kills roughly seven British Columbians each day.
This is not some minor quibble that the premier can simply gloss over with a new advisor and a few scolding words. If Eby cannot abide by Dr. Henry’s views on safer supply, as he claims to be the case, he has a professional and moral obligation to find a new provincial health officer who shares his vision on beating back the scourge of illicit drugs.
And while Dr. Henry’s latest parliamentary remarks alone were egregious enough to justify her firing, what’s even more concerning is that they fell in line with a pattern of ideological and unscientific statements on drug policy.
Two years ago, Dr. Henry stunned many in the recovery community by publicly stating that abstinence “does not work for opioid addiction.”
By implying that it is unrealistic to expect opioid users to kick their habit, and dismissing abstinence-based treatment programs in a carte blanche manner, Dr. Henry not only devalued the lived experiences of scores of British Columbians who’ve recovered from opioid addiction, she also betrayed a profound ignorance of decades of scientific research that shows that ex-addicts can, and often do, attain long-term abstinence from opioid drugs through community-based treatment programs.
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Surrey, B.C.-based addictions specialist Dr. Jenny Melamed said in an email that it was “disingenuous” for Dr. Henry to “differentiate opioid addiction from other forms of addiction with respect to the ability (of addicts) to recover.”
“I have devoted my medical career to working with individuals with addiction. I witness recovery on a daily basis from all addictions,” wrote Dr. Melamed.
Instead of helping drug users obtain recovery, Dr. Henry has fixated on ideological policies that only enable and entrench addiction.
Dr. Henry’s mission to legalize drugs has been particularly concerning. In a 2019 report titled, “Stopping the Harm: Decriminalization of people who use drugs in BC,” she wrote in an executive summary that B.C. cannot “treat its way out of the overdose crisis.” The report recommended that provincial authorities “urgently move to decriminalize people who possess controlled substances for personal use,” following the then-fashionable hands-off approach to drug use.
Her solutions have catastrophically failed in jurisdictions across North America, most recently in the State of Oregon, whose leaders now acknowledge that legalizing hard drugs was a mistake. But Dr. Henry shows no capacity for this sort of hard self-reflection — despite the mayhem that decriminalization, a policy she aggressively championed, caused in B.C. over the last year.
She is instead choosing to double down on an ideological dogma that is fast losing popularity with both experts and lay citizens.
Dr. Henry’s inability to admit she was wrong when confronted with new information is perhaps the most damning indictment of her fitness to lead. British Columbians deserve a provincial health officer who will follow the evidence, especially when it leads them to reconsider strongly held beliefs.
One public figure who hasn’t minced words about Dr. Henry’s unsuitability as B.C.’s top doc has been South Surrey MLA Elenore Sturko, a newly minted BC Conservative, tweeted last week that “David Eby needs to fire Dr. Henry immediately.”
In a phone interview, Sturko said that while Dr. Henry has done some good work as provincial health officer, she believes it’s time to change directions.
“Given the lack of improvement, and the complexity of the overdose public health emergency, I believe that we need a change of approach. Perhaps it’s time to appoint an addictions specialist with front line experience as well as a research background lead this emergency,” Sturko said.
“In a statement last week NDP Premier David Eby said he’s not in agreement with Dr. Henry’s push to legalize drugs,” Sturko added. “If she is focusing her work and response to a public emergency in a direction that isn’t supported by the premier, this conflict will perpetuate his government’s ineffectiveness at saving lives.”
With drug-related deaths on the rise for three consecutive years, B.C.’s near decade-long drug crisis shows no signs of abating. The time for half-measures has long since passed. David Eby must take a clear stand against the failed drug policies of yesteryear by removing Dr. Bonnie Henry from her post as provincial health officer.
The stakes, both political and human, are frankly too high for the premier to keep the intransigent doctor in her current job.
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A B.C. pharmacy scam investigation has led the provincial government to return to a witnessed consumption model for safer supply
More than 60 pharmacies across B.C. are alleged to have participated in a kickback scheme linked to safer supply drugs, according to a provincial report released Feb. 19.
On Feb. 5, the BC Conservatives leaked a report that showed the findings of an internal investigation by the B.C. Ministry of Health. That investigation showed dozens of pharmacies were filling prescriptions patients did not require in order to overbill the government. These safer supply drugs were then diverted onto the black market.
After the report was leaked, the province committed to ending take-home safer supply models, which allow users to take hydromorphone pills home in bottles. Instead, it will require drug users to consume prescribed opioids in a witnessed program, under the oversight of a medical professional.
Gregory Sword, whose 14-year-old daughter Kamilah died in August 2022 after taking a hydromorphone pill that had been diverted from B.C.’s safer supply program, expressed outrage over the report’s findings.
“This is so frustrating to hear that [pharmacies] were making money off this program and causing more drugs [to flood] the street,” Sword told Canadian Affairs on Feb. 20.
The investigation found that pharmacies exploited B.C.’s Frequency of Dispensing policy to maximize billings. To take advantage of dispensing fees, pharmacies incentivized clients to fill prescriptions they did not require by offering them cash or rewards. Some of those clients then sold the drugs on the black market. Pharmacies earned up to $11,000 per patient a year.
“I’m positive that [the B.C. government has] known this for a long time and only made this decision when the public became aware and the scrutiny was high,” said Elenore Sturko, Conservative MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, who released the leaked report in a statement on Feb. 5.
“As much as I am really disappointed in how long it’s taken for this decision to be made, I am also happy that this has happened,” she said.
The health ministry said it is investigating the implicated pharmacies. Those that are confirmed to have been involved could have their licenses suspended, be referred to law enforcement or become ineligible to participate in PharmaCare, the provincial program that helps residents cover the costs of prescription drugs.
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Witnessed dosing
The leaked report says that “a significant portion of the opioids being freely prescribed by doctors and pharmacists are not being consumed by their intended recipients.” It also says “prescribed alternatives are trafficked provincially, nationally and internationally.”
Critics of the safer supply program say it enables addiction, while supporters say it reduces overdoses.
Sword, Kamilah’s father, is suing the provincial and federal governments, arguing B.C.’s safer supply program made it possible for youth such as his daughter to access drugs.
Madison, Kamilah’s best friend, also became addicted to opioids dispensed through safer supply programs. Madison was just 15 when she first encountered “dillies” — hydromorphone pills dispensed through safer supply, but widely available on the streets. She developed a tolerance that led her to fentanyl.
“I do know for sure that some pharmacies and doctors were aware of the diversion,” Madison’s mother Beth told Canadian Affairs on Feb. 20.
“When I first realized what my daughter was taking and how she was getting it, I phoned the pharmacy and the doctor on the label of the pill bottle to inform them that the patient was selling their hydromorphone,” Beth said.
Masha Krupp, an Ottawa mother who has a son enrolled in a safer supply program, has said the safer supply program in her city is similarly flawed. Canadian Affairs previously reported on this program, which is run by Recovery Care’s Ottawa-based harm reduction clinics.
“I read about the B.C. pharmacy scheme and wasn’t surprised,” Krupp told Canadian Affairs on Feb. 20. Krupp lost a daughter to methadone toxicity while she was in an addiction treatment program at Recovery Care.
“Three years [after starting safer supply], my son is still using fentanyl, crack cocaine and methadone, despite being with Dr. [Charles] Breau and with Recovery Care for over three years,” Krupp testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health on Oct. 22, 2024.
Krupp has been vocal about the dangers of dispensing large quantities of opioids without proper oversight, arguing many patients sell their prescriptions to buy stronger street drugs.
“You can’t give addicts 28 pills and say, ‘Oh here you go,’” she said in her testimony. “They sell for three dollars a pop on the street.”
Krupp has also advocated for witnessed consumption of safer supply medications, arguing supervised dosing would prevent diversion and ensure proper oversight of pharmacies.
“I had talked about witnessed dosing for safe supply when I appeared before the parliamentary health committee last October,” she told Canadian Affairs this week.
“I’m grateful that finally … this decision has been made to return to a witness program,” said Sturko, the B.C. MLA.
In 2020, B.C. implemented a witnessed consumption model to ensure safer supply opioids were consumed as prescribed and to reduce diversion. In 2021, the province switched to take-home models. Its stated aim was to expand access, save lives and ease pressure on health-care facilities during the pandemic.
“You’re really fighting against a group of people … working within the bureaucracy of [the B.C. NDP] government … who have been making efforts to work towards the legalization of drugs and, in doing that, have looked only for opportunities to bolster their arguments for their position, instead of examining their approach in a balanced way,” said Sturko.
“These are foreseeable outcomes when you do not put proper safeguards in place and when you completely ignore all indications of negative impacts.”
Sword also believes some drug policies fail to prioritize the safety of vulnerable individuals.
“Greed is the ultimate evil in society and this just proves it,” he said. “We don’t care about these drugs getting into the wrong hands as long as I get my money.”
This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant to Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.
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The leaked audit shows from 2022 to 2024, a staggering 22,418,000 doses of opioids were prescribed by doctors and pharmacists to approximately 5,000 clients in B.C., including fentanyl patches.
A confidential investigation by British Columbia’s Ministry of Health, Financial Operations and Audit Branch has uncovered explosive allegations of fraud, abuse, and organized crime infiltration within PharmaCare’s prescribed opioid alternatives program. Internal audit findings, obtained by The Bureau, suggest that millions of taxpayer dollars are being diverted into illicit drug trafficking networks rather than serving harm reduction efforts.
The leaked documents include photographs from vehicle searches that show collections of fentanyl patches and Dilaudid (hydromorphone) apparently packaged for resale after being stolen from the taxpayer-funded “safer supply” program. This program expanded dramatically following a federal law change implemented by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government in 2020, which broadened circumstances in which pharmacy staff could dispense opioids, according to the document’s evidence.
“Prior to March 17, 2020, only pharmacists in BC were permitted to deliver [addiction therapy treatment] drugs,” the audit says.
B.C.’s safer supply program was launched in March 2020 as a response to the opioid overdose crisis, declared in 2016. It allows people with opioid-use disorder to receive prescribed drugs to be used on-site or taken away for later use.
The Special Investigations Unit and PharmaCare Audit Intelligence team identified a disturbing link between doctors, pharmacists, assisted living residences, and organized crime, where prescription opioids meant to replace illicit drugs are instead being diverted, sold, and trafficked at scale.
“A significant portion of the opioids being freely prescribed by doctors and pharmacists are not being consumed by their intended recipients,” the document states.
It suggests that financial incentives have created a business model for organized crime, asserting that “prescribed alternatives (safe supply opioids) are trafficked provincially, nationally, and internationally,” and that “proceeds of fraud” are being used to pay incentives to doctors, pharmacists, and intermediaries.
BC Conservative critic Elenore Sturko, a former RCMP officer, began raising concerns about the program two years ago after hearing anecdotes about prescribed opioids being trafficked. She asserts that the program is a failure in public policy and insists that Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry be dismissed for having “denied and downplayed” problems as they emerged. Sturko also argues that B.C. must change its drug policy in light of U.S. President Donald Trump’s stance linking the trafficking of fentanyl and other opioids to potential trade sanctions against Canada.
The document shows that PharmaCare’s dispensing fee loophole has incentivized pharmacies to maximize billings per patient, with some locations charging up to $11,000 per patient per year—compared to just $120 in normal cases.
Perhaps most alarming is the deep infiltration of B.C.’s safer supply program by criminal networks. The Ministry of Health report lists “Gang Members/Organized Crime” as key players in the prescription drug pipeline, which includes “Doctors, pharmacies, and assisted living residences.”
This revelation confirms long-standing fears that B.C.’s “safe supply” policy—originally designed to prevent deaths from contaminated street drugs—is instead sometimes supplying criminal organizations with pharmaceutical-grade opioids.
The leaked audit shows from 2022 to 2024, a staggering 22,418,000 doses of opioids were prescribed by doctors and pharmacists to approximately 5,000 clients in B.C., including fentanyl patches.
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Beyond organized crime’s direct involvement, pharmacies themselves have exploited regulatory gaps to generate massive profits from PharmaCare’s policies:
- Pharmacies offer kickbacks to doctors, housing staff, and medical professionals to steer patients toward specific locations.
- Financial incentives fuel fraud, with multiple investigations identifying 60+ pharmacies offering incentives to clients.
- Non-health professionals, including housing staff, are witnessing OAT (opioid agonist treatment) dosing, violating patient safety protocols.
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